They're The World's Fastest TFTs... Again!

I’m not sure which record lasts for less time: fastest graphics card, lowest ms TFT or biggest hard drive? One this is for sure though, in the monitor race we’re fast running out of numbers.

I say this because ViewSonic has taken the latest pole today in rather strange circumstances: its 3ms offerings are actually the same monitors it released in March but reclassified. You see, for the first time in marketing history, a company was apparently “pessimistic” and undersold its models. So what were already jointly the world’s fastest monitors are now on their own in pole once again.

Even stranger is the company’s declaration that both the 17in VX724 and 19in VX924 purportedly work at 3ms across the whole colour range now, not just grey-to-grey. How is this possible? A revised testing benchmark apparently. You’re only going to bug me if I don’t spell this out so here is ViewSonic’s explanation word for word:

Prior to announcing the 4ms monitor models, ViewSonic compiled GTG response time data from 16 starting grey levels to 16 ending grey levels (total: 16x16=256 response time data points). Since then, we’ve tested our monitors on a full 256x256 grid (total: 65,536 data points). This more comprehensive test increases our confidence level in the resulting average response time of 3ms. Compare this to other monitor makers, many of whom report GTG response time based on only a 3x3 or 5x5 grid. Only 9 or 25 data points….

Naturally enough, ViewSonic is expecting grief from this, leading it to pose questions in its release such as:

Why weren’t the VX models introduced as 3ms in the first place
And Isn’t all of this confused at best and misleading at worst for consumers

Two thumbs up to both of those. That said, finding out you’ve got something more for nothing isn’t particularly bad news and it means I don’t have to write the rest of the specs out which is a bonus. I’m going to use the free time this creates to go open the bonnet of my Mazda, just to make sure it’s not a Porsche.